When you’re trying to decide what to get at your favorite fast food spot, it can be hard to know exactly what you’re eating – including whether it’s made with potentially harmful ingredients.
That’s because restaurants aren’t required to make their ingredients public. And due to a decades-long legal loophole called “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, many of the chemicals used in our food haven’t actually been reviewed for health or safety. Food companies, not the Food and Drug Administration, are deciding what’s safe to put in what you eat.
We took a closer look at menus from 12 of the top fast food chains in the U.S. to find out which were still using food chemicals with potential health and safety risks:
- Arby’s
- Burger King
- Chick-fil-A
- Chipotle
- Domino’s
- KFC
- McDonald’s
- Panera
- Pizza Hut
- Subway
- Taco Bell
- Wendy’s
Beyond the ingredient lists, our findings reveal a bigger picture: U.S. food policies are falling short of helping people eat healthy.
Food chemicals appear on most fast food menus
We looked at how many popular chains used chemicals from EWG’s Dirty Dozen™ Guide to Food Chemicals. This guide spotlights some of the top food chemicals that experts recommend avoiding because of their potential health harms.
Because fast food chains don’t have to make ingredient lists public, EWG’s review of menu items was limited to the most recent information available online. It isn’t a comprehensive look at all fast food, but it does reveal some clues about how chemicals of concern are used in the places we eat.
At least one Dirty Dozen chemical appeared on almost every menu we reviewed, with the exception of Chipotle.
Subway and Panera also appeared to use fewer chemicals of concern in their food, while McDonald’s used most of EWG’s top chemicals of concern somewhere on its menu.
Artificial dyes and other common additives
The most common additive on fast food menus was artificial dyes, which appeared on all menus except for Chipotle’s and Subway’s. Dyes were mostly used in artificially flavored beverages like sodas, lemonade and milkshakes, though not every chain posted drink ingredients.
Sodium nitrite, a meat preservative linked to cancer, appeared on more than half of the menus reviewed. Used in processed meats like sausage, ham and pepperoni, sodium nitrite was frequently found in foods from Pizza Hut, Subway, Domino’s, McDonald’s and Wendy’s.
Titanium dioxide, an additive European regulators say is no longer safe in food, was listed in about half of the menus – mostly in dressings. It also appeared in Taco Bell’s vanilla creamer, which is used in some of its dirty sodas, Refrescas and coffee drinks.
Artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose showed up often in “zero sugar” beverages.
TBHQ, a preservative with potential toxicity, was used at pizza chains like Domino’s and Pizza Hut. Most Pizza Hut crusts were made with TBHQ, as were its chicken wings and breadsticks.
What should families in a fast food world eat?
It’s not practical to expect people to become experts on every food chemical. That’s why EWG advocates for policies that make healthy eating easier for everyone.
The FDA recently proposed to narrow the GRAS loophole, but far more is needed to make sure the food supply is safe.
In the meantime, you can scan nutrition facts and ingredient lists when they’re available, and try to avoid long lists of ingredients you wouldn’t find in your home kitchen.
If you’re grocery shopping, check EWG’s Food Scores, which rates more than 150,000 products on nutrition, ingredients and processing and flags ultra-processed foods for you. Shoppers on the go can also use EWG’s Healthy Living app.
